The Wreck of the Hesperus
_By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_
**It was the schooner Hesperus,
That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter,
To bear him company._
_Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,
Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,
That ope in the month of May._
The poem follows the anapestic meter with consistent iambic trimeter lines, creating a rhythmic beat and flow to the poem. Each line consists of three anapestic feet, with two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable. This meter gives the poem a galloping rhythm, reflecting the movement of the ship in the waves.